Is the scene Best is talking about where Jar-Jar talks about how he really does have a secret girlfriend living in Canada? She loves him a lot and does all kinds of freaky stuff in bed but she doesn't like him to talk about her.

Tax Boy:Jim_Callahan: Sith apprentices killed by their master's betrayal in all six movies: zero

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Count Dookoo says hello "Why did you give me such a stupid name, George Lucas?"

Point, I guess Palpatine did throw him under a bus even though the Jedi did the actual murderin'.

Call it 2.5 mindless Jedi murder to 0.5 deadly Sith corruption, then.

Still a bad move to play the "dangers of corruption in a democracy" card when your heroic alternative is a theocratic militaristic faction that considers skill at chopping people up with a sword to be one of the primary considerations in choosing their leaders, has no qualms about working with autocrats and slavers, and attempts a bloody coup the moment they suspect that a member of the secular government subscribes to a different religion (instead of, y'know, presenting their evidence of conspiracy to the senate).

Jim_Callahan:Of course, the writing failure for little Anakin was kind of compounded by the acting failure for adult Anakin. Christiansen's decision to spit out every line like he was already a chaotic evil blood knight from his first minute on screen (when, you'll recall, he's a well-regarded padawan who is liked by everyone around him according to his told character) instead of at least trying to seem like a nice guy made the transition jarring and out of character even more than the bad writing.

I think this is the biggest flaw in the whole trilogy. Yes, more than Jar Jar and Jake Lloyd.

In ANH, Obi-Wan presents Anakin to Luke like he was truly a good man. And the first time we see him grown up, he's being a whiny biatch, disrespecting Obi-Wan in front of important people, and generally not embodying any of the qualities of a Jedi. And yet somehow they talk about him like he's doing good, noble things we never see. And from there, he only gets worse throughout the rest of the trilogy.

Also, the first few times he meets Padme as an adult, he's a total unabashed creepster, to the point where she justifiably says, "get out of my room, you're making me uncomfortable." She seems to be responding like a sensible young woman to a guy who up till now has only been an asshole and a stalker in her presence, and then when he keeps trying to molest her after all the times she's told him no, suddenly she's OK with it. Again, we never see him do anything that explains why anybody likes this guy.

Every year at San Diego Comic Con, every major toy manufacturer does an exclusive just for the con (and a limited number of online sales). This year is a "Lost Line" type thing, with one figure from each film in special packaging made to look as it Kenner was still making them. There's a bonus figure that you can only get in this set, however, and it was revealed yesterday:

When I first saw the artwork for Jar Jar Bink, there was no name on it and he looked quite solemn and sad. Mournful even. Then he turned out to be a slapstick nitwit with a daft name. Too bad, it was an interesting creature design with those ears and eyes.

This is easily the most important rule of filmmaking: All movies must convey a single mood or tone, and it must stay true to this tone throughout. You can't shift gears halfway through and make your silly slapstick movie suddenly a Hitchcockian suspense thriller.

This is part of what makes the Transformers franchise so awful: It can't decide if its a comedy, a romantic fable, an action adventure or a war epic. These are four entirely different tones that do not mix well together. You can not have giant alien robots pooping, peeing, farting, humping, wandering about absent-mindedly with ridiculous earth accents, smacking each other like the Three Stooges in one scene, and then suddenly have them hunker down and behave like serious, hardened soldiers of war in a big battle five minutes later. Aside from the fact that this is a betrayal of their characters, the movies are so completely unfocused as to how they want you to feel. Moreover, Michael Bay doesn't give you the time and space to let these emotions well up inside so you can connect with the characters better, before the plot whisks them away to make them do some other dumb thing out of character. It is important that, if you're going to put serious, somber political intrigue and squabbling diplomatic disputes and other legal dialogue in your movie, don't put it right beside a CGI dewback farting on a farking gungan.

Focus is an establishment of mood. You want the audience to be in a certain state of mind to appreciate your film correctly. Stanley Kubrick was a master of this. A lot of his films had very long, drawn out single shot scenes several minutes long where nothing happens or characters fill it with mind-numbing protocol. The purpose is to lull the audience into a certain state of mind before he nails them later on (and this is not something that can happen instantly...it takes several seconds/minutes of buildup).

If the audience is not given th ...

I love the special feature bit where it's essentially the first screening of TPM before some big editing decisions need to be made. Lucus has got a child smile on his face, yet everyone else in the special feature looks bordering on unabridged terror. You can see it in their eyes they know it absolutely stinks, but no one will speak up to king George who simply thinks it perfect.

It's amusing as hell. The editors, producers and everyone else in that room was pissing their pants.

Lucky for them SW can make millions on brand alone. Honestly, it should have been a Medellín moment.

TyrantII:I love the special feature bit where it's essentially the first screening of TPM before some big editing decisions need to be made. Lucus has got a child smile on his face, yet everyone else in the special feature looks bordering on unabridged terror. You can see it in their eyes they know it absolutely stinks, but no one will speak up to king George who simply thinks it perfect.

It's amusing as hell. The editors, producers and everyone else in that room was pissing their pants.

My favorite moment on the special features is when Lucas is doing the auditions for Anakin.

They show several boys, each of whom is ok and a halfway-decent child actor.

Then they get to Jake Lloyd, who gives a flat, emotionless line reading with no charisma whatsoever. It's terrible, like when junior-high school kids read shakespeare in class and they don't understand the words.

Then suddenly George Lucas stands up and yells "We've found our Anakin!"

Tax Boy:TyrantII: I love the special feature bit where it's essentially the first screening of TPM before some big editing decisions need to be made. Lucus has got a child smile on his face, yet everyone else in the special feature looks bordering on unabridged terror. You can see it in their eyes they know it absolutely stinks, but no one will speak up to king George who simply thinks it perfect.

It's amusing as hell. The editors, producers and everyone else in that room was pissing their pants.

My favorite moment on the special features is when Lucas is doing the auditions for Anakin.

They show several boys, each of whom is ok and a halfway-decent child actor.

Then they get to Jake Lloyd, who gives a flat, emotionless line reading with no charisma whatsoever. It's terrible, like when junior-high school kids read shakespeare in class and they don't understand the words.

Then suddenly George Lucas stands up and yells "We've found our Anakin!"

Obviously he's trying to sabotage his own movies. He's being held hostage by evil duck aliens.

TyrantII:I love the special feature bit where it's essentially the first screening of TPM before some big editing decisions need to be made. Lucus has got a child smile on his face, yet everyone else in the special feature looks bordering on unabridged terror. You can see it in their eyes they know it absolutely stinks, but no one will speak up to king George who simply thinks it perfect.

It's amusing as hell. The editors, producers and everyone else in that room was pissing their pants.

Lucky for them SW can make millions on brand alone. Honestly, it should have been a Medellín moment.

That is what saved Star Wars in the first place. There were others to tell George Lucas that what he was trying to release was horrible and they were able to get outside people to re-edit the movie and managed to scrap something together worth watching. The release of the scenes they cut that were in the movie were truly awful. Then they managed to get a decent director and producer for the second and third movie.

No one had the guts to tell George Lucas he was off his rocker. I guess they didn't want to be fired rather than have artistic integrity. George Lucas is best at releasing first drafts that can be rewritten, special effects and general ideas, but needs keeping on a lease.

He done a a couple of good films when he didn't have the budget to blow like THX-1138 where he had to rely more on acting and writing to put across the point. However, in Star Wars he purposely had some of the most talented actors in the world act intentionally wooden, and then fed them awful dialogue and relied on special effects to make up for bad writing.

Tax Boy:TyrantII: I love the special feature bit where it's essentially the first screening of TPM before some big editing decisions need to be made. Lucus has got a child smile on his face, yet everyone else in the special feature looks bordering on unabridged terror. You can see it in their eyes they know it absolutely stinks, but no one will speak up to king George who simply thinks it perfect.

It's amusing as hell. The editors, producers and everyone else in that room was pissing their pants.

That's one of my favorite parts of the Plinkett reviews, if only for the moment where it is so clear exactly how bad it is, that Lucas actually apologizes for the end of the movie. Well, as close as we're ever going to get.

I always envisioned a scene in Revenge of the Sith, to showcase Anakin's descent towards the dark side, where we see Anakin sitting at a table eating. Obi Wan walks in and asks,"Anakin, what are you eating?"

FunkOut:When I first saw the artwork for Jar Jar Bink, there was no name on it and he looked quite solemn and sad. Mournful even. Then he turned out to be a slapstick nitwit with a daft name. Too bad, it was an interesting creature design with those ears and eyes.

Mentalpatient87:Coelacanth: If you fancy yourself to be a bit of a libertarian or a pirate, this is your book.

Can I get one for people who don't care for silly ideological labels?

Ignore the ideological labels, it's a interesting concept on its own. A technologically advanced group of planets raiding the fallen remnants of a galaxy-spanning civilization is pretty cool to read about.

The 3-d animated show had the right take on Jar-Jar: he represents chaotic good: He's like the "drunken master" martial arts guy: a tool of the Force that doesn't consciously control his powers, but thru fandom chance, every "accident" he creates has an overall positive, though unanticipated result.

THIS would make Jar-Jar the awesome character the kiddies would like to collect: Kids are clumsy in adolescence, they break things, they make rash decisions that are incompletely panned-out, but in their minds their intent is positive. Jar-Jar as chaotic good Jedi by Accident says to them: we know your intentions are good, you're just immature and clumsy, but some day you'll grow out of that."

As far as Annakin, I think a lot of this was made worse by hand-fisted and wrong edits Lucas made. He spent too much screen time on the spectacles and not enough on proper character development and motivation. He shot but threw away scenes of Padme sitting in on the creation of what will be the Rebel Alliance. Had he left that in, and let Annakin discover his wife and master teacher were in on a conspiracy that he had been risking his life to fight, Discovering his religion and his woman are all (in his eyes) lies and deceit, fueled by prompts from the Emperor, THAT makes for proper farking motivation for turning into VADER. It's the most classic conflict in human history: Love vs. Fear. Trust vs. suspicion.

NEDM:Mentalpatient87: Coelacanth: If you fancy yourself to be a bit of a libertarian or a pirate, this is your book.

Can I get one for people who don't care for silly ideological labels?

Ignore the ideological labels, it's a interesting concept on its own. A technologically advanced group of planets raiding the fallen remnants of a galaxy-spanning civilization is pretty cool to read about.

Heh, I'll look it up. I was just ribbing Coelacanth for the politics plug, instead of recommending a book because it's a good book..

limeyfellow:That is what saved Star Wars in the first place. There were others to tell George Lucas that what he was trying to release was horrible and they were able to get outside people to re-edit the movie and managed to scrap something together worth watching. The release of the scenes they cut that were in the movie were truly awful. Then they managed to get a decent director and producer for the second and third movie.

There's an interesting article about how Marcia Lucas (new window), his first wife, basically saved Star Wars and got an editing Oscar, the only Oscar Star Wars received.

Of course, the Star Wars Holiday Special was her idea, too, but then everyone was probably on cocaine by that time.

There's no "he's creepy" or "there's something not right about that kid." to it. He was just TOO OLD and the Jedi Counsel's rules were very strict: You don't train someone who is too old because they have attachments, and that leads to fear, which leads to anger, which leads to the Dark Side.

And it was in their rules. They were up to their necks in tradition and red tape. They couldn't accept something that would break "the rules"-- It was unfathomable to them.

THAT IS WHY THEY DIED. They couldn't get their heads out of their asses and feel the "living" Force, as Qui-Gon begged them to.

Again, the story is about how the wars and the Dark Side corrupted society and brought it down, so that a new, fresh start could happen.

Bringing balance to the Force meant getting rid of the old Jedi Order, and all its ridiculous bureaucratic rules, too.

That's one of many problems. Anakin in Clones doesnt even vaguely resemble Anakin from TPM. His impatience and brooding angst are never adequately explained.

I can believe a good kid growing up into a brooding youth, it happens often enough. Though it would have been nice to throw in some connection, like his saying "I'm still a slave" in reaction to some piece of Jedi code or Obi-wan mastering.

What I can't stand is the whole "I sense in him much fear" line - the child Anakin doesn't display any fear - he leaves his home, mother, and planet and goes off with a bunch of strangers with regret but no fear. He engages in highly dangerous race with no fear. And despite Yoda's caution, his fall into the dark side is not due to fear, but possessiveness.

That's one of many problems. Anakin in Clones doesnt even vaguely resemble Anakin from TPM. His impatience and brooding angst are never adequately explained.

I can believe a good kid growing up into a brooding youth, it happens often enough. Though it would have been nice to throw in some connection, like his saying "I'm still a slave" in reaction to some piece of Jedi code or Obi-wan mastering.

What I can't stand is the whole "I sense in him much fear" line - the child Anakin doesn't display any fear - he leaves his home, mother, and planet and goes off with a bunch of strangers with regret but no fear. He engages in highly dangerous race with no fear. And despite Yoda's caution, his fall into the dark side is not due to fear, but possessiveness.

That's because the only formal writing class Lucas ever attended was taught by Kitty Farmer.

The prequils strayed too far from the oringal movies in Lucas' attempt to fill in his plot holes. Only he made them larger.

Ancient hokey religion - a religion just doesn't become 'ancient' in 40 years.Darth Vader being Luke's father - come on, that's just some serious bad writing there.Oh wait, now you're brother and sister and we'll never mention that kiss again - I hate you Lucas, I really do.

whenIsayGO:In ANH, Obi-Wan presents Anakin to Luke like he was truly a good man. And the first time we see him grown up, he's being a whiny biatch, disrespecting Obi-Wan in front of important people, and generally not embodying any of the qualities of a Jedi. And yet somehow they talk about him like he's doing good, noble things we never see. And from there, he only gets worse throughout the rest of the trilogy.

Old Ben must have been fondly remembering something from the ten off-screen years between TPM and AOTC (during which, notably, Anakin and Padme had no contact), or from the Clone Wars years. It's really interesting how all the voice actors in the Clone Wars animated series try to sound consistent with their characters' actors from the films except for Anakin who is doing a completely different take on the character as a charming, confident hero.